Remember my “lover and a fighter” friend from two weeks ago?
IN CASE you don’t, he was the one who committed to a five-day-a-week strength program and got the results to back it up. In my overzealousness to raise my level of fitness, I gave his program a try, hoping it would work for me.
During my first two weeks on it, I felt like a transcended immortal. I felt stronger, faster and lighter than I usually was. The weights were subject to me, and they would help build the majestic pyramid that was my body.
Then the following two weeks saw my crash back into the land of the mortals. I had made the weights my slaves for the first two weeks; they made me their slave for the last two.
I ended up regressing (if not worse) to my starting point and racking my brain for answers. It was only after swallowing a huge slice of humble pie did I realize that I shouldn’t have bitten off more than I could chew. I tried to match myself to someone else’s pace and ended up huffing and puffing for breath as a result.
It all boils down to an honest assessment of yourself. If you want to star in your own YouTube vlog like *insert celebrity YouTuber here*, you have to understand the sacrifices and the challenges that entails. You might be able to produce content as well as they can, but this isn’t your fulltime gig, and something from your own life has got to give from the extra attention you invest in your YouTuber life.
If you want to lift 500 pounds like world record-holder Sly Eastenegger, understand that it’s Sly’s job to compete with the elites and that he devotes his entire day for training. You, on the other hand, might be hard-pressed to squeeze in an hour of exercise three times a week—to say nothing of three hours of daily training.
Don’t try to outpace yourself—at least not too suddenly. Increasing your pace little by little is better than trying to do a full dash from a dead stop (and gasping for breath 10 seconds later). And don’t compare your pace to others as well. There will always be someone better and someone worse, leading us to become “vain and bitter,” as Max Ehrmann puts it.
Stick to your own game plan, and as long as you can look yourself in the mirror and honestly say you’ve made progress, you’re good to go.
Keep steady and march at your own pace—except when exams are just around the corner. Then it’s a cram fest with every man and woman for his/herself.